M6:3300 — تو کجایی تا بری در مخزنم / تا کنی از وام و فاقه آمنم

Translation: Where are you, that you might enter my treasury (my being) / so you may make me safe from debt and indigence? Meaning: This verse conveys a debtor's plea to his departed benefactor, expressing a yearning for their presence and a longing for relief from the burdens of poverty and need.

This verse is uttered by a debtor, who, out of loyalty and remembrance, visits the grave of his benefactor, the generous mohtaseb. With a heart full of longing and need, he addresses the deceased: “Where are you, so you might enter the treasury of my being and free me from the chains of debt and poverty?” Yet, Mowlana, true to his genius, elevates this earthly narrative to a celestial plane. The mohtaseb here is no mere charitable man; he becomes a symbol of the divine saints (awliyāʾ-i Ilāhi), a sun amongst the suns of spiritual knowledge.

We recall how the debtor would say “enough,” and the mohtaseb would insist: “Take this also, for my sake.” This is the pinnacle of boundlessness and altruism: for a person to insist on giving, not merely to fulfill another's need, but for the sake of his own inner contentment. Here, it is as if the ‘soul’ (jān) is the ‘essence’ (aṣl) and the ‘body’ (badan) the subsidiary (farʿ). The mohtaseb's body lies beneath the earth, but Mowlana, through the debtor’s words, declares:

Ḥāsha lillāh, you are beyond this world / both in your lifetime and now.

This utterance reveals the zenith of Mowlana's perspective on saints and mystics. God forbid that you should belong to this earthly realm. You were, both during your life and at this very moment, beyond the confines of space and time. Just as Imam Ali (as) described Kumayl, whose “feet are on the earth, but their spirits are suspended in the highest heavens.” These individuals possess a dual life, or rather, a singular life; their earthly existence is but a shadow of their celestial reality. After death, this thin veil is lifted, and they fully rejoin the original Sun, becoming entirely luminous.

It is here that the elegy sung by the debtor transcends a mere human complaint. This complaint transforms into a ‘narration’ (ḥikāyat) of an eternal presence. As I have always stressed regarding the opening of the Masnavi, Mowlana views the reed's lament not as a ‘complaint’ (shikāyat) but as a ‘narration’ (ḥikāyat). Here too, the apparent loss of the mohtaseb is merely a pretext for narrating his unseen presence. This separation (judāʾī) is not an existential loneliness (tanḥāʾī) that empties the world of meaning; rather, it is a separation from one who has always been and always will be present. We are the ones distant from Him, not He from us. The ‘debt and indigence’ (vām o fāqa) are but earthly forms of the ‘need for union’ (niyāz ba waṣl)—a longing for the presence of that bountiful spirit, whose very being contained an ocean of self-sufficiency.

Key takeaways

• An earthly loss transforms into a narrative of unseen presence; death is not the end of being.
• The benefactor's generosity transcends meeting others' needs; he gives 'for his own sake,' exemplifying ultimate altruism.
• Saints and mystics, even in life, transcend the boundaries of space and time; their earthly existence is a shadow of their celestial life.
• Mowlana transforms 'complaint' into 'narration'; absence becomes a pretext for recounting truth, not mere lamentation.
• In Masnavi, 'separation' (judāʾī) does not mean 'existential loneliness' (tanḥāʾī); it signifies the absence of a presence whose return is believed.